sketch books

I love working in a sketch book and I'll tell you why. An artist can learn so much by sketching and if you don't like what you see, you just turn the page and start over! There is no pressure to produce a perfect picture ( or there shouldn't be!) so you can just relax, have fun and doodle, sketch, write, whatever. This small painting came from a recent drawing in my sketch book. I didn't like the drawing in the book until I added the large tree on the right. By playing with different ideas in your book you can learn to create better compositions. My sketch book is a combination journal and sketch book. If I'm having a hard time on a drawing or just don't feel like drawing, I'll write instead. Writing relaxes me and helps get the ideas for drawings and paintings flowing.

I tried painting another sky study, this time a stormy sunset. I painted the warm colors first in a wet-on-wet technique, and when that dried I painted the dark, stormy clouds over it. Lastly I added the landscape on the bottom. It creates a rather vivid sky study which I will keep in my files and perhaps use in a future full size painting.